O SYNGNATHID.E. 



Whatever doubt may therefore be attached to Risso*'s synonym, the 

 present species may be assumed, Avith tolerable certainty, to exist also in 

 the jNIediterranean. In Madeira it is of excessive rarity ; a single female 

 individual only having occurred, which was brought alive and in full vigour 

 by a fisherman, as a great curiosity, on the 17th of August 1836. It 

 had been taken entangled in his net or lines, about five hundred yards off 

 the Loo Rock, or Ilheo ; and lived in a glass of sea-water, after its capture, 

 more than twelve hours, affording ample opportunity for the accompany- 

 ing record of its form and habits. 



The shape or contour of the head, and comparative proportion of the snout, 

 differ in no respect from H. breoirostris, Cuv. ; the main characteristics of the 

 species consisting in the size, number, and position of the crowded, much-branched, 

 bush-like tufts of cilice, or filaments ; which give the animal the appearance of 

 being enveloped in a mass of some dehcate gelatinous sea- weed, or conferva 

 (Tiraparnaldia or Ceramium), These float freely and loosely while the animal 

 remains immersed in water, but collapse into a shapeless jelly-like mass when 

 it is taken out of it. They are largest on the head, and thickest-set all down the 

 dorsal ridges ; along which they form a sort of upright mane, continued from the 

 head almost to the tip of the tail, with the exception of a short interruption from 

 the dorsal fin. The branches are short, thick, and blunt at their tips. 



The head is compressed, equalling one fifth of the entire length, measuring 

 from the tip of the snout to that of the tail, or one fourth of that of the body 

 without the head. It is bent down at an acute angle with the short neck, 

 which is itself abruptly curved nearly at right angles with the rest of the body. 

 The snout is short, measuring from the fore-comer, or anterior canthus of the eye, 

 about two fifths of the length of the head. It is fringed on each side with a row 

 of three or four short branched cilia?, and has two shorter triangular compressed 

 ones, placed one behind the other at its base, in the front or middle, just before 

 the eyes. Of these the hinder is the largest, and is placed upon a bony tubercle. 

 Eyes very prominent, perfectly circular, their diameter equal to one third the 

 length of the snout, measured as above ; each, as in the Chamaeleon, moving 

 fi^eely or independently of the other.* Close over each eye is a prominent bony 

 tubercle, out of which grows, concealing its existence to the eye, a single, large, 

 tree-like antler, with a distinct thick stem, directed vertically upwards, and in 

 length or height exceeding the distance from the tip of the snout to its base. Its 

 branches are somewhat blunt, and thick and short ; divaricate, or dividing at 

 wide open angles ; the pair resembling much in size, direction, and proportion, the 

 antlers of a stag, except in being of a fleshy, soft, or flaccid substance, and quite 

 flexible. Front or forehead flat, high, and narrow : in its middle, halfway above 

 the superciliary pair and the top of the head, or occipital crest, stands another 

 solitary antler, of equal size, and otherwise resembling the former, but directed 

 straight forwards, like the horn in the common representations of a Unicorn ,• so 

 that its branches fall between those of the pair above the eyes. On each temple, 

 and in a line with this single frontal antler, but on the sides of the head, is 

 another solitary antler of equal size, like shape and substance, with the former, 



* Mr. Couch has observed the same curious fact in a very different fish, Pliolis Icei'^is, Flem. See 

 Cuv. and Val. xi. p. 274. Mr. Lukis has oljservcd it also in the common Hippocampus hrevirostris, 

 Cuv. See Yarr. Brit. Fishes, ii. 344. 



